Tahmasp I

Portrait of Shah Tahmasp I. Inscribed "Tammas Pers". Painted by Cristofano dell'Altissimo, dated 1552-1568.jpg

Portrait of Shah Tahmasp I, painted by Cristofano Dell'Altissimo between 1552 and 1568.

Panel/oil painting.

Inscribed "Tammas Pers". (Tanavoli, Parviz (2015). European Women in Persian Houses: Western Images in Safavid and Qajar Iran. I.B. Tauris. p. 18. ISBN 978-1838608484.)

Housed at the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

The idea of a universal gallery made up of portraits of illustrious men was thanks to Cosimo I de' Medici. In 1552, the duke of Tuscany sent the painter Cristofano dell'Altissimo to Como to copy the collection of portraits of illustrious men that the learned bishop Paolo Giovio, who had recently died in Florence, had collected in his villa on the lake from 1521. It was a very rare collection, the most important of its kind, both for the presence of numerous splendid originals and for the large number of subjects. Copies were sent from Como in groups from 1552 to 1587/89, so much so that Vasari, in the second edition of the "Lives" (1568), lists 280 portraits already present in Florence. In the meantime, Vasari himself had set up for Cosimo, in Palazzo Vecchio, a room annexed to the rooms of the Guardaroba, the so-called room of the Globe or of the geographical maps, destined to welcome in a particularly worthy setting also the collection of portraits of illustrious men who hand was forming. The program so loved by Cosimo I did not bear fruit with the new Grand Duke Francesco, while it resumed immediately and in full with the accession to the throne of Ferdinand I. Between 1587, the initial year of his government, and 1591 he arranged for the transfer collection of portraits in the corridor of the Uffizi; in 1597 the diplomatic traveler and writer from Vicenza Filippo Pigafetta rearranged the collection according to the "dignities and professions" and highlighted the most serious gaps in order to then complete and update the whole series. The Giovian collection was continued until 1840, today it has 492 pieces and is extraordinarily important from a historical-iconographic, if not stylistic, point of view. The portrait in question, mentioned in Vasari's list of 1568, depicts Tammas Sophy, king of Persia, who lived in the 16th century.